The Last Warrior

by Kylie Brant

  She considered the excuse for a moment and then shook her head. “Flimsy, Youngblood. Very flimsy. I can’t imagine breaking into your house in a similar situation.”

  He was beginning to look annoyed. Under the circumstances, she was glad. Any reaction from him was better than the implacable expression he usually wore. “Someone shot at you. It wasn’t unreasonable to consider, when you didn’t answer, that maybe that same someone had shown up to finish the job.”

  She blinked. That was a little scenario she hadn’t thought of. Since her knees felt a little shaky, she leaned against the couch. “I think the shots were fired to scare me off. To get me away from the area I was exploring.”

  “Might have been,” he agreed. “Or it could have been someone recognized you and took the opportunity to express displeasure at your being on the reservation. Did you see anyone?” When she shook her head, he pressed, “Did you notice any other vehicles? Evidence that people had been using the area?”

  Although she shook her head again, he didn’t relent, leading her through the entire sequence of events with a thoroughness that wasn’t lost on her. “What about the pictures you took?”

  “How do you know I was taking pictures?”

  “Another logical assumption.” His voice was dry. “It’s what you do, right? And you said you’d wanted some shots of the cliffs. Maybe we’ll see something in one of them that will give us a clue to the identity of the shooter. Or the reason he wanted you out of there.”

  “I haven’t downloaded the pictures yet. I’ve been sort of busy.”

  He nodded. “Okay, we’ll deal with that later. In the meantime, there’s plenty of daylight left. Why don’t you take me back to where it happened.”

  She stared at him, nonplussed. Although his words had been couched as a suggestion, she knew him well enough to know there had been an order hidden in there somewhere.

  “I could loan you the map I used, if you promised to return it,” she said grudgingly. “You could go check it out…”

  “No need,” he said, heading toward the door. “You’re coming with me. We’ll take my Jeep.”

  Joe took his eyes off the road long enough to slide a look at the silent woman in the seat beside him. He’d had hostile witnesses more talkative.

  Delaney’s reluctance to accompany him had been obvious. But he wasn’t going to set off on a possible wild-goose chase when she could just as easily direct him herself. Despite the map, she couldn’t describe where it had happened. She’d need landmarks to find the exact area again.

  The sun was still bright. Heat waves shimmered off the highway. He reached up to the visor, slid his sunglasses out from their holder and put them on. He wasn’t thrilled about spending the next few hours in her company, either. Especially when it was all too easy to imagine her in the brief yellow towel that had left enough bared skin to have his hormones flickering to life.

  His mouth thinned. Hormones were primitive things, unhindered by judgment or good sense. All his body’s response really meant was that it had been too long since he’d last gotten laid. It had been hard to summon interest, or much else, since Heather had taken off with Jonny.

  But in one of life’s cruel little ironies, interest, and a lot more, was raised by this woman. She was the last type of female he’d ever consider getting involved with. She was another belagana, like his ex, and his failed marriage had taught him that non-Navajos could never understand the link he had to this place, to the land where his ancestors had lived.

  Logic, however, played a poor second to lust. None of those reasons mattered, because permanency was the last thing he was looking for. They didn’t have to like each other for Joe to act on the heat that flared in the pit of his belly whenever he thought of Delaney. Wild, hot, mind-numbing sex didn’t have to have a damn thing to do with the brain.

  Resolutely, he shoved aside the wayward thoughts. He’d never been a man to be controlled by the area south of his belt. Nor did he seek out needless complications, which Delaney Carson had written all over her.

  She leaned forward and started fiddling with the rearview mirror.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Changing the temperature button to the one marked compass.” She sat back. “This afternoon I didn’t end up where I was originally heading, but I know the directions I went. Pretty much.”

  “Around here we call that lost.”

  “Do you?” She aimed a dazzling smile at him. “I call it differently located.”

  That smile hit him square in the chest with the force of a fast right jab. Any other woman would still be shaky and maybe a bit hysterical after what she’d been through. She shouldn’t be humorous, displaying an unmistakable charm that made him stop and wonder if there was more to her than he’d considered earlier.

  And the fact that he did wonder irritated the hell out of him.

  “Turn north on Highway 89,” she said.

  He slowed, and turned as she requested. “How’d you happen to get lost if you were on the highway?”

  “This isn’t the way I came, but I ended up on this road on the way back. Anyway, it was when I got off the main roads that I wound up…somewhere other than where I’d intended.”

  It was safer to retreat behind a professional mask. “It’d be wise to take a guide with you the next time you get the urge to go exploring. A person can die of heatstroke pretty rapidly in this climate. Not to mention the chance of happening on a poisonous snake, scorpion or black widow.”

  Her smile faded and she turned back to the window. “I’m aware of the dangers. I took the precaution of packing a survival kit for my vehicle.”

  “If one of those shots had found its mark, you wouldn’t have had the chance to get back to the Jeep for the kit,” he replied grimly. “No one would have known where you were. Chances are you’d have died out there and it would have taken days for someone to find your body.”

  “Nice thought,” she muttered, rubbing her arms. “You’ll be happy to know the Navajo Tribal Council has arranged to place a guide at my disposal.” She craned her neck to look out the window. “I’m not inexperienced in traveling in remote places, but this isn’t exactly Afghanistan or Iraq. There, women weren’t safe alone in public, so obviously I was never unescorted. Foreign journalists are obvious targets for kidnapping. Indonesia was just as volatile.”

  Her words had him surveying her more carefully. He’d heard something of her background, but hadn’t familiarized himself with the details. “So why’d you keep going to those kinds of places?” Some people were adrenaline junkies. He could understand that. Police departments had their share.

  Her face swung to his, genuine surprise in her expression. “For the stories, of course. How would you get your news about what’s happening outside our country if people like me didn’t report it?”

  The reasonableness of her response was lost on him. “But why you? What was there about the job that made you take the kind of risks you did, day after day, for years?”

  She seemed to be searching for words. “My father is a painter,” she said finally. “He makes a living with his portraits, but his love is the stills. I used to watch him mix his paints when I was little. He’d spend hours getting just the right shade of blue and I couldn’t understand that. Sky is blue. Just choose blue and get on with it, right? But he used to say, ‘the impact lies in the shade I use.’”

  She pushed her glasses on top of her head, and Joe found himself distracted by her eyes, with their odd, exotic slant and curious wash of color. He couldn’t recall ever seeing that gray-green hue before, with the startling band of gold around the irises.

  And he couldn’t recall the last time he’d bothered to analyze a woman’s eye color.

  “Photography was my first love,” Delaney was saying. “I took journalism classes just so I could do something with it, but quickly figured out I got hooked on the story. Not only what happened, but why. Your job, it’s more cut and dried, isn’t it? Someone does som
ething to someone and you find out who did it. Make them pay. But truth isn’t always black and white.”

  “That’s what most of my suspects would say,” he replied wryly.

  “I’ve seen the devastation, the poverty in some of those countries, the results of primitive governments and war. But the story, the truth, varies depending on whose eyes I’m telling the story through. In a time when news can be slanted to suit political purposes, it’s even more important to show all sides. That’s what my photos do. Put tangibles, faces to the news. Because the impact lies in the pictures I use.”

  He heard the passion in her voice, and could appreciate the enthusiasm she had for her job, even if he couldn’t fully understand what drew her to it. But then, most people didn’t get why he’d chosen investigative work, when his college degree would have qualified him for a number of higher-paying occupations. People were lucky to feel that kind of commitment to any job. When they did, it was impossible to imagine doing anything else.

  “I got the feeling from your grandfather yesterday that you and he are close.”

  The shift in conversation caught him by surprise. “Yes.”

  “But you don’t approve of my being here. Of his cooperation on this project.”

  He kept his voice carefully neutral. “Did I say that?”

  “Your reaction yesterday did. You didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat when you figured out who I was.” When he remained silent, she prodded, “Has your difference of opinion caused problems between you and your grandfather? Because I wouldn’t want…”

  “My relationship with my grandfather is none of your business,” he said succinctly. He didn’t need her reminder that he hadn’t yet spoken to the older man, hadn’t smoothed out the friction that had risen between them in the last week or so. “We aren’t two of the faces for you to add to your project. Our personal lives are off-limits.”

  “Really.” She twisted in the seat to glare at him. “So it’s only questions about me that are fair game.” She nodded, as if in understanding. “Be sure and write these rules down for me so I don’t make the mistake of believing you’re capable of rational conversation.”

  She couldn’t make him feel small. Not about this. “We were having a rational conversation.”

  “Wrong. Since you were the only one allowed to ask questions, it was more of an interrogation. But don’t worry. The boundaries are clearly marked. I caught that. Take a right up here.”

  He almost missed the direction, couched as it was with sarcasm. He took the corner a little fast and she slapped a hand on the dash to brace herself. But she didn’t say anything else. As a matter of fact, she lapsed into the same silence she’d kept earlier, and this time he wasn’t stupid enough to try to get her talking.

  Tension all but crackled in the interior of the vehicle. Delaney spoke only to give him a direction to take. When she did, he could almost scrape the ice off her words.

  That was okay. He gripped the wheel with both hands on the rough, uneven dirt road they’d taken. Ice was good. It would help maintain a distance between them that would defuse the heat.

  He had the feeling he was going to need all the help he could get.

  Chapter 3

  “This is the place.” If revisiting the spot she’d been shot at bothered Delaney, it didn’t show in her voice.

  “You’re sure?” Joe was already slowing down, looking in the direction she pointed. The collection of rose-colored sandstone buttes and jagged spears of rock jutting skyward clustered around steep massive cliffs of the same color.

  “There’s a sort of road coming up. Probably went a quarter mile on it before I parked.” Her head swung toward him when he stopped the vehicle. “Don’t you want to get closer?”

  “Not without trying to see if whoever took those shots at you is still around.” He unbuckled his seat belt and reached into the back seat for the binoculars he’d brought along. Withdrawing the high-powered glasses from the case, he scanned the area carefully. There was no sign of anyone. But then, the bluffs provided ample protection for a person who wanted to stay out of sight.

  His 9 mm pistol wasn’t going to be much use in this situation so he unbuckled his holster, folded it around the gun and put it in the glove compartment. Then he slipped the strap of the binoculars over his head, got out of the SUV and opened the back door. He saw Delaney’s brows rise over the top of her sunglasses when he took the rifle out of its rack and quickly loaded it.

  “I’d think the person who fired those shots at me would be long gone.”

  “You’re probably right, but in case he isn’t, I like my odds better this way.” He shut the back door and ducked his head into the driver’s side door he’d left open. “Which way did you approach the cliffs?”

  “I parked parallel to that first butte.” She pointed. “After taking some pictures, I wanted to get closer. I was going to go around and between the two largest formations toward the car. I didn’t round them before the first shot was fired.”

  Grimly, Joe studied the area. Between the formations and where she’d parked, there was very little in the way of cover. She’d practically been a sitting duck. It made him suspect that the shots hadn’t been meant to hit her. Unless the person had been an incompetent marksman, there was no way he would miss.

  Whether she’d been a real target or just meant to be frightened off, she still could have been caught by a bullet. And he found himself hoping that whoever had tried it was still around here somewhere. He wouldn’t mind dealing with him himself.

  “Stay here,” he ordered, as Delaney started to get out of the SUV.

  “Like hell.” She jumped out and slammed the door shut.

  He rounded the hood of the vehicle and blocked her path. “Don’t think I won’t use handcuffs if I have to.”

  “You could try,” she said coolly, hands on her hips. “I wouldn’t make it easy.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” he muttered. “Let me check things out. If there’s trouble, I don’t need to be worrying about you presenting another possible target.”

  “You wouldn’t have to worry about me if I were armed. I could carry your revolver.”

  Ice filled his veins. “The idea of arming you scares me worse than possibly walking into a trap. Just stay here, all right? The guy is probably long gone. If you see me wave, go ahead and pull the car around to where you parked yesterday.”

  Delaney folded her arms across her chest and glared at him. “And what do you want me to do if someone starts shooting at you?”

  “Use the radio to alert dispatch.” He strode away before she could state the obvious. Even provided they could find the location from her directions, it would be too late for help to arrive in time.

  It was probably a moot point in any case. The department-issued radios were spotty at best in the more remote areas of the Rez. If there was someone still hiding among the cliffs, Joe was probably on his own.

  He strode rapidly toward the bluffs, frequently raising the binoculars and scanning the area. Still no sign of anyone. If the shooter had a brain in his head, he’d have cleared out after firing those shots.

  He turned in the direction he’d come. The Jeep was a half mile in the distance and with the glasses he could easily make out Delaney, her expression impatient. The sight had something in him lightening.

  It was half-surprising that she’d remained there as ordered. A woman wasn’t as successful as she was in her line of work by being a passive bystander. When it came to reporting the world news from global trouble spots, photojournalism was still very much a man’s world.

  Which didn’t explain what had kept her traveling from one war-torn country after another. The reason she’d offered had only whetted his curiosity and that wouldn’t do at all. He could ill afford to be distracted by anything these days, least of all a woman.

  Especially this woman.

  Because caution was ingrained in him, he approached in a zigzag, taking what cover he could beh
ind rocks or scraggly bushes. The place was still, the sun searing through the bright blue sky even as it began its descent toward the horizon. A hawk did a lazy swoop from atop the far cliff, on the hunt to feed the hungry mouths back at its nest.

  He was even with the first bluff now, and the outcrop of smaller rocks was thicker here. His pace quickened. He wanted plenty of time to look around before heading back to Tuba City. They had a couple more hours of daylight, and he’d need all of it to do a thorough…

  The sound of an engine split through the quiet like a siren at midnight. Joe ran in a crouch toward the sound, thumbing off the rifle’s safety as he went. As he rounded the foot of the first rosy cliff, he had to jump backward to avoid being run over.

  The ATV leaped out at him, the driver bent low over the handlebars. The man atop it wore a ball cap low, and a shocked expression.

  Joe rose and sighted the rifle in one smooth move. “Tribal Police,” he called out. “Stop the vehicle.”

  In answer, the driver gunned the motor and reached beneath his shirt. Joe ducked behind some rocks as the first shot rang out. He returned fire, aiming for the rear tires on the ATV. But the driver was quickly pulling farther away.

  Joe squeezed off a rapid sequence of shots and then dived as the driver returned fire. There was little chance of hitting the man even had Joe been trying. The vehicle was packed with boxes and bags secured to the ATV in a precarious pile.

  Red dirt swirled in the vehicle’s trail. Joe ran in its path, sighted and fired again. He squinted through the cloud of dust and saw the ATV veer, hit a rock. Certain he’d struck a tire, he ran faster. But the driver righted the vehicle, and roared off, the packages teetering unsteadily.

  Biting back a curse, Joe stopped, wiping his forehead with the back of one arm. He might have had a chance of catching the vehicle if he’d had the Jeep here, but on foot he was…

  The Jeep. He sent a wary glance at the space between the cliffs and jogged around the closest bluff, staying close to the rocks. He wasn’t at all surprised to find the spot where he’d left Delaney and the Jeep obscured by puffs of dust. When she heard the shots she must have taken the opportunity to get closer, despite his directions otherwise.